The big finale for the Mardi Gras festival was the last ever Toybox party at Luna Park. What a party it was! Great music, both upstairs and down, fantastic light show and a really happy crowd. The final show, with a diva suspended above the cowd belting out "Reach for the Stars" has to have been the very best event in the dance party genre that I have witnessed.
As well as the parties there was a veritable visual arts feast this year.... Although most of my time and energy has been invested in the Samoan Congregational Church commission (see previous blogs), I did get to enjoy some of the shows. Iain Dawson Gallery in Paddington hosted Hot in the City and although I just missed the actual exhibition, there were several large canvases of Alun Rhys-Jones still in the stock room I was given a private viewing of Angus Malcolm's beautifully seductive photography.
At Stills Gallery, also in Paddington, William Yang staged a beautiful exhibition of old and new work and used the opportunity to present a new performance piece, an amalgam of several earlier works. I found William's black and white Australian landscapes, shown in the upstairs space, quietly enthralling and a wonderful foil to the somewhat noisier, though delightful, images in the main exhibition.
William is always engaging and entertaining, although this time he did seem a little nervous and the presentation was not quite as smooth as others have been. Several weeks earlier, during Chinese New Year, I was lucky to be invited to attend Meeting at Moree, a joint performance at Belvoir Downstairs between William Yang and Noeline Briggs-Smith that was part of COOLie. The two stories blended well, demonstrating different but parallel histories of vilification.
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